


something happened on the way to heaven

by dragonsinparis



Series: both sides of the story [1]
Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-11
Updated: 2017-01-11
Packaged: 2018-09-16 17:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9281969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonsinparis/pseuds/dragonsinparis
Summary: When the two heroes discover that Hawkmoth is Gabriel Agreste, Chat Noir throws him out the window for everyone to see.Adrien Agreste comes to live with the Dupain-Chengs.Chat Noir vanishes.Marinette is fine.At first.(originally posted on tumblr, based on Dire/portentous-offerings' amazing art 'the long kiss goodnight'; she is also responsible for the story concept)





	1. good night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dire_M](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dire_M/gifts).



> This is based on Dire (portentous-offerings on tumblr) art and story. I am lucky that she let me play with it, and also lucky that she offered to let me use that art when cataloguing the story here. It appears in the story at the appropriate point in the plot.
> 
> HOWEVER, she is very disinclined in general towards having her art posted anywhere but on her own blog, and I would ask any of you who enjoy her work to respect her wishes, and go follow her on tumblr.

The worst moment isn’t finding out Gabriel is Hawkmoth.

It’s not that that isn’t awful; it’s not that the ramifications for Adrien don’t race through her mind, tumbling over one another in tragedy. It’s not that a selfish part of her doesn’t break a little at the idea of her idol being rooted in something dark, something evil. Something that hurt her friends.

But she’s riding high on adrenaline and Gabriel being Hawkmoth is something she can fight. She can’t change who he is but she can make the best of the situation. She and Chat can fix this, before anyone has to know. Before _Adrien_ has to know. She can talk to Gabriel. Hawkmoth was always just a dark ominous concept; Gabriel is a person, a person she’s met, a person who she’s sure loves Adrien, even if what that means has gotten tangled up inside. If she can just reason with him, if she can just _reach_ him, she can end all the terror without ruining anyone’s life. She can fix this. She can do anything. She’s _Ladybug_. With a little bit of that trademark luck, she can just -

Chat Noir throws Gabriel Agreste out the window. He lands amongst the crowd of paparazzi and a thousand eager smartphones. All she can see is the shadow between flashes.

*

The worst moment isn’t seeing Adrien’s face.

Although that one definitely breaks her heart a bit.

As soon as Marinette sees him it’s impossible to deny the fact that he knows about his father. She has studied Adrien Agreste’s face so well over the time they’d known one another, she is convinced that nothing on it could ever surprise her. She is certain there was no expression that could surprise her, that there is no nuance she didn’t know, and if she’d been offered a new element before now she would have anticipated it like an unexpected gift under the Christmas tree. But she’d give anything, just to give this back.

It’s not an overt look; it isn’t drama. As a model he’s expressed so many things; he’s even done tragedy, on occasion. This isn’t that. This is something trembling behind his almost-blank expression, something he is processing even if he can only feel pieces of it at a time. He is digesting poison, inch by inch. He reminds her of a fawn on a documentary she saw once: a wounded animal that cannot see the hunter yet but knows how the story ends.  

She brings him home. She isn’t sure what else to do. The fact that she never has to wonder if her parents will take him in and care for him is something she is conscious of having, and treasures, for every step that she takes with this boy beside her.

All the humanity that she cannot see in Gabriel Agreste is woven into his son. But tonight, it burns the boy like acid, and she is condemned to be its witness.

*

The worst moment is when she realizes that it has taken her three and a half weeks to notice that Chat Noir has vanished.

She’d just been so wrapped up in Adrien. In making sure Adrien was okay. In looking out for Adrien at school, which had turned into a quiet jigsaw puzzle of people unsure of his nature and his connection to his father.

Her self-consciousness in front of him had melted away in the face of his tragedy, but a part of her in turn is glad she could be the one to take him in. Part of this is selfishness: she learns more about him in a week of cohabitation than she did in months at school, all the little details of personality limited to life outside the public eye, and she treasures them. Every new piece tells her that her heart is not misplaced, that she fell for exactly the right person: even in the face of hurt and trauma he is unabashedly good in a way that almost no one she’s ever known is. But part of it is not selfishness, because her parents are also just that good, and he deserves guardians who will value and match him for that very quality.

And she, from this vantage point, can see just what a difference this makes.

Adrien has never been slow to smile, but over the weeks he opens like a flower. Things are still hard, the media is still a mess, school is still a tangle, but watching him drink tea and talk to her mother in Chinese or learn to bake a berry tart with her father is a revelation. She can see his backbone stiffen as he learns inch by inch and test by test that a different opinion isn’t going to be rejected out of hand. She can see his eyebrows go up as he smiles when someone asks about his day and actually wants to hear the answer. They give him what she’s always had: a firm awareness of her own value, and faith in her own ideas.

She’s so busy, and at first she’s so _happy_ , but she feels as if she’s watching it all happen from further and further away. She hasn’t had time to be Ladybug, but with Hawkmoth gone that hardly matters. She’s getting enough sleep for the first time in months. And the few times she thinks of Chat Noir, at first, she is glad that he isn’t around. She’d been so angry at him. She’d offered him more than a few choice words after he’d thrown Gabriel out the window, and she has a few more stored up. Whenever she looks at Adrien those first couple of weeks, and sees how sad he is, she comes up with a few more.

But she never gets the opportunity to use them.

She starts patrolling again: criminals are still around, after all. And after a few weeks off, she’s dying to stretch her muscles, to fly over her city on a yo-yo, to grab that kind of peace that she’s only ever found lurking in the almost-sky.

Chat doesn’t resurface.

Her anger at his actions turns to annoyance at his absence. Is he _sulking_? Does he just think they’re _done_ with this whole hero thing?

She starts looking more for him than for crime, on those patrols. To no avail, of course. People start noticing that she’s patrolling alone. Newspapers start asking if the dynamic duo has broken up.

And when it’s been nearly a month, she knows something is genuinely wrong.

It’s not that Chat doesn’t get mad. But he doesn’t stay mad. He doesn’t hold grudges. She’s yelled at him before, and he’s never held it against her. And the boy dove in front of her, on multiple occasions, with a willingness to accept death on her behalf. He wouldn’t leave her on her own. He wouldn’t. He _wouldn’t_.

Which can only mean something’s happened to him. And that the last thing she said to him before it did was - she can’t even remember. She knows she called him selfish, maybe even stupid. She is fairly certain she questioned whether he even remembered what being a hero meant.

Because after all, what mattered was _Adrien_.

She goes to the library. She doesn’t look for articles on Gabriel’s impending trial, or even old articles about her partner. She looks for everyday articles: things that have happened to ordinary people. People whose names she doesn’t know. Teenaged boys. Boys who could have fallen off their bike or been hit by a bus or gotten pneumonia, and she wouldn’t have known or cared, because she was so determined not to know. She scours the internet late at night, in between patrols. She still patrols. Because if he comes back, she needs to be there, she needs him to know where he can find her.

She calls him every night. He never picks up.

One night she calls him, on video, when she isn’t transformed. The risk of it courses through her, but she is relying on Murphy’s Law: she’s doing what she knows she shouldn’t, so of course it should be the one time he actually answers.

He doesn’t, though. Murphy’s Law fails her.

Tikki wants to help, but doesn’t know anything.

In desperation she tries to go to Master Fu, but he’s just gone. He’s vanished. Hawkmoth is defeated. She’d given Fu the broach after the fight with Hawkmoth - whether he thought that was the end of it or whether he’d simply gone to bestow it on a better bearer is beyond her. It doesn’t matter. He isn’t here to tell her where she can find her damn cat.

Her mom sits her down at some point to have a talk. They’re worried about her, Sabine says. She isn’t eating much. She seems withdrawn. Marinette tells her mother that she’s fine; that she knows Adrien needs them more than she does right now and that watching what he’s going through has been rough, but that she’s okay. The lie is easier than it should have been. She is less and less okay, but she starts hiding food in her napkin so they’ll think she’s eaten it. She starts telling her parents she’s out with friends when she’s at the library. She masters the fake smile. She covers up the symptoms.

It isn’t until Adrien stares at her, a bit too hard and a bit too long, that she realizes where she learned that fake smile. But she turns away from him, and he doesn’t say anything.

She goes out as Ladybug. She goes out as Marinette. She avoids Alya’s calls. All Alya wants to talk about is the missing Chat Noir.

The panic is fuzzy, distant, almost bearable - until she’s watching an old movie with her parents and Adrien. A character mentions that cats tend to know when they’re dying and go into hiding, and she bursts into tears. She is made up of such huge choking sobs that her whole body rocks with them, in rhythm. A cradle. A heartbeat. An echo.

She manages to tell her parents she needs to be alone; she goes up to her room. She doesn’t stay there; if she’s good at anything at this point, it’s sneaking out.

It’s raining. Of course it’s raining. She is, honestly, kind of glad it’s raining.

She doesn’t transform. Ladybug gets noticed. Marinette is just one more teenager who is out too late and doesn’t have an umbrella.  

She ends up at Theo’s statue. She’d been avoiding it. She’d been avoiding pictures and news; she’d been doing her best to avoid everything. But here they are, _together_ , smiling, immortalized in bronze. Even in this fictionalized instant, they are more a team than anything else, anything individual. She knows it was Aristotle who said that the whole is more than the sum of its parts, but what are the parts supposed to do when they can’t be the whole anymore?

She doesn’t feel whole. She feels like a hole. He would have appreciated the pun, if he’d ever been able to bear her unhappiness.

She sits down beside him. It’s not him, but it’s as close as she’ll get. She breathes in, out; leaning against him, it’s as if her lungs fill more than they’ve been able to in weeks. She isn’t at peace, that’s kind of the point, but this is as close as she can get to a tiny sliver of it.

 

(art by the amazing portentous-offerings @ tumblr, who was kind enough to let me use it here but PLEASE DO NOT REPOST)

 

By the time the umbrella is over her head, shielding her, she’s been in the rain so long that she doesn’t really feel it anyway.

“Marinette...”

She opens her eyes. Green eyes. Adrien and an umbrella. Her heart aches at the familiarity of it: she remembers so clearly falling for him in that moment, the first day she was a hero, the day she met Chat. Everything had started all at once; everything had changed all at once. She thinks in that moment of Gabriel Agreste, insisting that he’d done it all to get his wife back. She’s never understood more than she does in that moment the idea of giving up everything to go backwards. She wants to wake up to the same face on an absent rainy afternoon, when all her days with Chat Noir were still ahead of her.

“Marinette, what’s wrong?”

She looks down, shakes her head. Her wet bangs stick to her forehead and get in her eyes. “I can’t - I don’t want to talk about it.”

She can see in his face that he’s afraid it’s something to do with him; that him being part of her family has cost her something he is unaware of. She wants to tell him. She is sure she could trust him with her secret. But it isn’t fair to tell anyone, at least not until she knows what happened to Chat.

“Will you come back home, at least? I’m worried you’re gonna get sick.”

“I have to say goodbye to him,” she says. She is still leaning against the statue. It is the only thing she is sure is real. Her mind could have dredged up the image of Adrien with the umbrella; it isn’t as if that isn’t a mental image she lingers on constantly. But the statue is hard and cool and smooth beneath her hands, her cheek; the statue is here.

Adrien’s voice is choked, uncertain. She hasn’t heard him sound like that since the first week after Hawkmoth’s arrest. He must think she’s bonkers, but for the first time, she does not actually care about Adrien Agreste’s opinion. “Did you...know him? Were you a fan?”

“He was my friend,” she says, fierce and sad. “He _is_ my friend. I just...don’t know where he is. I don’t know what happened to him...after.” There is no nice way to say _after he threw your father out a window for being a supervillain_. “I thought there would be...time to tell him the truth.”

Adrien is quiet for a long time. Which is fine. She stays up against the statue, and listens to the rain.

“We should go back before your parents figure out you snuck out,” he says finally.

She gets up. She kisses the statue’s cheek. She walks home beside Adrien; they do not speak. She pretends he is another blonde boy with green eyes, and she matches that boy step for step in perfect synchrony the way she always had.


	2. good morning

_“I thought there would be...time to tell him the truth.”_

It is not until this moment, weeks later, that Adrien thinks to wonder exactly how Marinette Dupain-Cheng managed to get to his house faster than the police, the paparazzi, the crowds. That it had barely hit social media before she was there at his house. He’d barely tumbled in the window and dropped his transformation when she arrived, and he’d never questioned it.

As he looks at her tear-stained face beside the statue, the answer slides into his heart, easy as breathing.

He doesn’t have to think about it. He doesn’t have to dissect the connections; he doesn’t have to run through every previous instance of coincidental timing. He doesn’t have to think about how she was always around just when Ladybug wasn’t, and always seemed to know just what to do. He doesn’t have to glance at the earrings she wears or the pigtails - _how did he and everyone else in Paris miss the goddamn pigtails?_ \- to know what he’ll see. He doesn’t have to remember what sparked her breakdown barely an hour ago in the first place, the moment on the screen that set her sobbing.

His mind will be consumed with these things, he knows - for hours, for days, maybe forever. But for right now, all that matters is that she’s crying.

She’s crying because she misses him, even though he’s been with her more than he ever had.

It’s not that he’s given up being Chat Noir. And part of him hasn’t wanted to face Ladybug after what happened - she was so angry, and he was so sure he’d have to tell her the truth about his relationship with Gabriel Agreste.

But part of him has just been...enjoying the rest.

Being Chat has always been wonderful. But part of that has always been the fact that being Chat Noir is an escape from all the confines that come with being Gabriel Agreste’s son. Now Gabriel Agreste is lying in a prison hospital with a dislocated spine and a broken tailbone and a severe concussion, and Adrien has been telling himself he’ll go back to being Chat the next day or the next day or the next, because he’s been so consumed with learning who Adrien is now that he’s free.

It isn't as if his life is suddenly all that much better - the ghost of his father’s double life looms over his shoulder pretty much all the time - but it is a lot more _his to dictate_. Adrien Agreste finally gets to choose, and that is strange and new and intoxicating.

He likes Free Adrien. He likes _being_ Free Adrien.

It is the only revelation he’s ever had powerful enough to distract him from his love for Ladybug - who, it turns out, has been saving him as Free Adrien too and he just hadn't noticed until he’s driven her into the ground.

The rain has made his shoes and the cuffs at the bottom of his pants wet; all he can feel is how cold they are. And here is Marinette, here is Ladybug, soaked to the bone.

He’s never had the opportunity to be selfish before; he realizes he got lost in it.

He has to make it up to her, but the truth won't come out. He can't bring himself to risk his new home. If she doesn't forgive him he’ll have lost everything all over again.

He is overwhelmed with finding Ladybug, so easily, just when he has stopped looking. He is going to have to tell her, sooner or later. He is exactly fourteen inches away from everything he’s ever let himself want; he cannot believe the perfect brutal symmetry that exists in both the best and worst aspects of his life.

They walk back to the bakery in silence. He pretends she knows, and that she is happy. He wonders if this makes him like his father, if he is sacrificing his own soul in an effort to cling to what he can’t let go.

*

“Can I see him?” He asks.

Nathalie furrows her brow as she takes a sip of her tea. He's noticed how much she's cut down on coffee. She's technically his legal guardian, but between the complications of enforcing any document signed by Gabriel and the fact that he doesn't want to leave the bakery, she's not insisting on enforcing it. He's relieved: he loves Nathalie, which he isn't sure he realized before, but she's as lost as he is in this whole mess and she needs the room to sort out everything as much as he does.

Even though he is not staying with her, even though he is fairly certain she prefers it that way, she has given herself over to making every element of his life as smooth as possible. If a reporter tries to corner him without her consent, the legal ramifications are tangled and brutal. She is a one-woman war against the paparazzi, against the school trying to kick him out based on image, against the complaints by parents of his fellow students.

Like many wars, this is mostly fought in private, with complex legal documentation and a firm silent scowl that he doesn’t get to witness. But he knows it is her, and he does his best to show her how much he appreciates it. She is not one for large gestures or speeches but he sends her office supplies and muffins (her habit of forgetting to eat while working leaves her more gaunt than his model diet) and fills her voicemail with messages about how relieved he is about how little the newspapers get away with printing.  

She takes him out to dinner twice a week, to keep tabs on how he’s doing. The conversations are stilted and quiet and awkward and he swells with love for her, every time.

“Are you sure you want to?” She asks.

She does not say _no_. She does not say _forget him_. She does not say _you shouldn’t_ or _he’s evil_ or _I don’t think you’re ready._ She simply acknowledges that Adrien is in the habit of doing what his father wants, of being too forgiving, of bowing to what he thinks he _should_ do based on expectations from a man who perhaps did not always have his best interests at heart.

“No,” says Adrien. “But there’s some stuff I want to know, and some stuff I want to...know if he knows.”

Nathalie is silent for a long time.

“You should be careful,” she says finally.

“He’ll be handcuffed to a hospital bed,” Adrien says. “Even if he wasn’t, he’s still my father. I don’t think he’d go all supervillain on me.”

“He doesn’t have to touch you to use what he knows about you against you,” Nathalie says.

Adrien stares at her, carefully.

They are both quiet for a moment. It is a far more pointed silence than the comfortable, awkward quiet that generally exists between them.

“You know,” he says, finally.

“I know a lot of things,” Nathalie says. “I was in a better position than anyone to see how he treated you, no matter what his intentions were. Despite everything, I imagine he still thinks he knows best, and would attempt to convince you to bow to it if he can. A man like that is unlikely to reexamine his morality just because all of society tells him to. And you love him, and you know he loves you, so you might be inclined to acquiesce to his wishes in ways that are perhaps unhealthy in an effort to reach him.”

Which he knows, of course, and which doesn’t make any of it easier to hear, _of course_ , and yet - “No, I mean, _you know_.”

Nathalie raises a delicate, neutral eyebrow.

He sets his jaw and stares her down. A photographer who requested fury once referred to this expression as ‘angry labrador puppy’ which made him hugely self-conscious about it, but it’s the best he’s got.

“I know that if he were aware of any particular secret about you, he is either keeping it or not keeping it for his own reasons, and you acknowledging any truth behind it would only make it easier for him to use it against you. I know that after what happened to Hawkmoth, because he did it for you, you feel that you owe him something. I know that you don't. His choices about what to do with any particular gifts he might have are his alone. As were yours. I know that you have done nothing but the best you could with the tools at your disposal, and honestly, I am not sure I know anyone who could have done better.”

She sips her tea again, and examines her pocket calendar which is laid out on the table. She's been hacked twice for his information and thus has taken to writing everything down although he knows it drives her bonkers. His heart hurts, but in a good sort of way. He can't believe how inaccurate her name - _Sancoeur, heartless_ \- has turned out to be, when he once thought it was so appropriate.

“Oh, don't cry,” she says irritably when she sees his eyes fill. “There's three photographers lurking right outside hoping for it, and the last thing we need is another article about how you’re having an emotional breakdown and I’m using it to steal all your money.”

He hugs her instead, burying his face in her shoulder so the paps can't get a shot of his tears.   He doesn't really care, but he’ll do anything to make her life easier. She tenses up initially but then she sighs and pats him on the head awkwardly, and he can feel her uncoiling just the tiniest bit: a woman so long alone, who is just learning not to be. It's something they're learning together. And she doesn't have the Dupain-Chengs to teach her, so it’ll have to be him.

Which is only fair, considering all she's done. Family has to go both ways.

*

He has been hoping all along that there is something his father could say that would make everything better. But there are no magic words for this, and the idea that he does not owe his father his own secret in trade for them is as freeing as anything.

*

He intended to tell her the whole truth, immediately, but he gives himself a day - a day to hold this secret as purely his, his identity in his own hands. A day to collect his mind and his heart, because he knows everything will change.

But his first priority is to end Marinette’s suffering, so when he knows she is busy he plies Plagg with cheese - the kwami has been enjoying the opportunity to be lazy for weeks now - and convinces him to transform. That afternoon Chat Noir leaps across the Parisian skyline, and is caught on hundreds of cell phone cameras by citizens and tourists delighted to have the chance to see the hero’s return in person after everything that’s happened. He leaves Ladybug a note at their usual spot on the Eiffel Tower, apologizing for his absence and everything that had come before. He asks her to meet him the following night, and gives an address. He thinks about leaving her a gift - it would be so easy now that he knows Marinette so well - but any possibility seems silly under the circumstances. Something small seems trite; something large seems like he’s trying to make up for what happened by being grandiose. He swallows the urge: there will be plenty of opportunity for gifts later, he thinks. He hopes.

The transformation that Marinette undergoes when she finds out that Chat Noir has been spotted and is all right would be almost comical in its lack of subtlety if it didn’t so clearly drive home how miserable and worried she’s been. At some point in the afternoon she vanishes, and Ladybug is spotted retracing Chat’s steps. She must have found the note, because Marinette spends the day so high-strung he’s surprised she doesn’t short out any lamps in her vicinity. She is all made up of excitement and nerves; she drops anything that finds its way into her hands and she can’t sit still for more than five seconds. Her father accuses her of dipping into the espresso, which she cops to in a fit of giggles because of course she can’t tell them the truth.

He kind of wonders how much Tom and Sabine know anyway. Now that he’s a bit more clued in, he can’t help but be aware of how aggressively terrible all the miraculous holders are at secret identities. He hopes, though, that she gets to tell them on her own terms someday when she’s ready. He is not sure whether they will react with pride or concern, but either will come from uncompromising love for their daughter. This fact makes him relieved and grateful anew every time it crosses his mind.

In this house, so full of love in even the most mundane of moments, it crosses his mind often.

*

He had hoped to beat her to the rooftop, but Marinette claims a headache the following evening and goes to “bed” at 7 pm. He makes up something about unfinished history homework and follows her upstairs, but she’s already gone.

He had picked a place that overlooked the park, so that if his courage fails he can look down at the statue and remember how sad she’d been. He’d been overwhelmingly tempted to ask her to meet on the roof of the bakery - the park is right across the street, after all, it has the perfect view - but he didn’t want to freak her out. So he knows she is waiting on a rooftop a few doors down, probably pacing, probably furious and excited by turns.

He is terrified, but he has finally accepted that putting it off won’t make it any easier.

And even though he has seen her every single day, he misses the side of her that she showed to him more than anyone else. He misses his partner. He isn’t sure what their future holds behind their masks now that Hawkmoth is gone, but he knows he wants that future to include both sides of him and both sides of her.

Her back is facing him when he arrives, but he knows she hears him because she rocks slightly up on her toes. He can tell that she is, even now, deciding whether to be angry that he vanished or relieved that he’s here.

Behind her back, he drops his transformation, and Plagg zooms off. No chickening out now: there is no way that Adrien Agreste could have gotten on to this stranger’s roof.

“I wasn’t sure you’d really come, _chaton_ ,” she says. For all that tension, for all that anger and fear and hurt, her voice is gentle and affectionate.

She turns.

She freezes.

“We’re three doors down, Princess,” he says, with a smile he knows shows every last bit of how nervous he is. He’s mostly proud his voice doesn’t shake. “It isn’t far.”   

She is just staring at him. Her lips are slightly parted; her eyes are wide and bluer than he’s ever seen them.

He is used to being looked at. It was his job to be looked at for years - by dozens, hundreds, thousands of people. If you counted the degree of separation a photograph provided, by millions. And yet: he has never been more pointedly conscious of someone else’s gaze. He has never felt so vulnerable, reflected in someone else’s eyes.

Paradoxically, he has never felt so safe.  

He knows, in a rush - though she has not moved and has not spoken, though her expression has not changed - that she will forgive him. That now that she knows the truth, there will be nothing to forgive. That he should never have doubted her, even if it was tied to how easily he has always doubted himself.

She moves towards him, slowly. He stays where he is; he is not sure that he is physically capable of moving. She reaches up and touches his cheek with one finger, as if to make sure he is real.

“ _Oh_ ,” she says.

He recognizes, in what is barely more than an exhale, the recognition his own heart felt in learning the truth: _it’s you, it’s been you all along, how could it be anyone else_?

She smiles, and the tremble goes out of his smile in return.

“I’m sorry,” he says. He knows she has already forgiven him, but he has been learning more and more that accountability in your own eyes is important. It is something his father never learned, so he is determined to. “For everything.”

She looks down at the statue below them, then back up at him. There is a critical, mischievous gleam in her eye.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says.

“I cannot abandon my nature, My Lady.”

“I would never ask it of you,” she said. “We’d all be poorer for it.”

“If you nerds are done with feelings,” Plagg says, “I’ve had a few solid weeks now of way less cheese than I am accustomed to and deserve, and I feel like this situation should be rectified as soon as possible.”

Ladybug blinks at the kwami, as if even knowing Adrien is Chat Noir, she is surprised at its existence. Her transformation falls away into Marinette, and he can tell that she didn’t drop it on her own: a little red blur tackles Plagg, and starts lecturing him on respect and responsibility and the human heart. Whether these are more important than cheese remains inconclusive, because Plagg is disinclined to back down, but despite the kwami’s impatience Adrien is not going to have to give any of them up, and he cannot help laughing.

Marinette is laughing with him, and he finally has the only part of home he’d still been missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come make fun of me for my Phil Collins affection on tumblr @ dragonsinparis


End file.
